“Transgender Wrestler” Booed After Winning Another Girls’ Tournament

by Jazz Shaw at HotAir:

Those of you who have been following our coverage here over the past year or more are probably already familiar with Mack Beggs, the female high school wrestler who “identifies” as a male but has been wrestling in the girls’ division. She won the state championship last year, and on Saturday repeated the feat, concluding an undefeated season. Some in the audience at the match were clearly not pleased. (Star-Telegram)

Mack Beggs has captured his second straight state wrestling title.

And once again his state gold medal ceremony included a mix of cheers and jeers from the crowd.

On Saturday at the Berry Center in Cypress, Texas, the transgender male wrestler capped a perfect 36-0 season by claiming his second straight UIL girls Class 6A state title in the 110-pound weight class by decision, 15-3, against Chelsea Sanchez of Katy Morton Ranch High School.

The video from the event is available at the Star-Telegram link above.

Believe All Women’ at Your Peril

by David Solway at American Thinker:

We’ve heard it all before: “start by believing.” “Believe survivors.” At a recent panel discussion at the Ottawa City Hall, where my wife, Janice Fiamengo, was one of three featured participants, the subject of #MeToo and “Believe All Women” came up during the Q&A. (See 1:35:34 to 1:38:27 of the embedded YouTube video below.) An audience member claimed that it behooved us in most cases to give credence to women bringing forth their stories of sexual abuse. The young woman was skeptical of the court process as a way of resolving issues of sexual violence in women’s favor and contended that we need “non-criminal” forms of restorative justice, some form of “healing or accountability.”

Janice and her co-panelists, authors Paul Nathanson and David Shackleton, quickly put paid to that notion. Non-legal judgments via social media and public shaming could be as onerous and punitive as legal sentencing, turning men who had not been proven guilty into social lepers and bankrupts. The legal system may be flawed, but, as Shackleton remarked, it is the best we have and is theoretically capable of improvement.

In fact, an argument against #MeToo and the concomitant pursuit of non-legal incrimination is often put forward by the subtler variety of feminists, such as Josephine Mathias in the National Post and Bari Weiss in the New York Times, but for a completely different reason. They maintain that false allegations in the public sphere, such as the Duke Lacrosse and Rolling Stone moments, may discredit the “Believe All Women” movement; in the words of Weiss, such fictions “will tear down all accusers as false prophets.” It is not the harm to innocent men that concerns Weiss, but the damage to female credibility. The movement must be maintained.

Here I would indicate that, contrary to the young questioner who distrusted the cumbersome apparatus of the courts, which lead only to “re-victimization,” as well as Shackleton’s faith in a self-corrective justice system, court judgments in our SJW era tend to favor women – and when they don’t, the cry goes up for a quasi-legal system based on the “preponderance of evidence” rather than the “presumption of innocence” model – that is, on whatever narrative the judge or adjudicator tends to believe as more persuasive, evidence be damned. After all, women who lie or collude are only victims too troubled to get their stories straight.

In any event, whether utterly oblivious of the need for reasonable assessment and sober judgment before taking action, as in the example of the young woman in the Q&A session, or arguing against public dissemination of false reports, as the more sophisticated feminists hold, the problem remains. A deep emotional commitment to a cause, scanting the imperative to seek evidence before judgment or refusing to recognize that abuse comes in many forms, including women who trivialize their complaints or are complicit in unsavory acts in order to further their careers, is, to put it bluntly, immoral. What we are observing is an ideological compulsion that militates against reason and fairness.

A case in point: Andrea Dworkin, one of the stoutest pillars of radical feminist theory, claimed in her autobiographical writings that she had been abused and raped from the age of nine and continuing for decades. As Dworkin assured us in her book Intercourse, “[v]iolation is a synonym for intercourse”; again, in Our Blood, that “[u]nder patriarchy, every woman’s son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman.” It’s a bridge too far for most sensible people. Even feminist former columnist for The Globe and Mail Leah McLaren dismisses her stories as “full of inconsistencies and logical gaps.” No wonder Dworkin, who said, “There is always one problem for a woman: being believed,” is herself unbelievable. Her voluminous deposition is a form of abusing her readers with mainly self-indulgent fables.

Of course, belief in such matters should depend on the search for credible evidence and the objective assessment of facts, but such an approach has been blithely discarded by another radical feminist and collaborator, Catherine MacKinnon. In Feminism Unmodified, she wrote: “Our critique of the objective standpoint as male is a critique of science as a specifically male approach to knowledge. With it, we reject male criteria for verification” (emphasis mine). It follows that truth deriving from objective analysis is a male conspiracy meant to subjugate women. Ergo, women must be believed regardless of evidence, the rule of law, and objective verification, since these are merely patriarchal strategies to enforce the masculine will.

The nonsense brachiates with every passing day, wherever we might look. In a recent profile for Canada’s elite left-wing rag The Walrus, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs Chrystia Freeland declared: “I’m a woman. I’m a wife. I’m a mother. One hundred years ago, I would’ve been beaten by my husband. That’s what happened to pretty much all women.” Judging from her photo, I suspect that Freeland is not 100 years old, but then, I suppose we must give her the benefit of the doubt. She is a high-ranking government apparatchik who must know what she is talking about.

Naturally, feminists will point to statistics showing that men predominate in cases of domestic violence. The category of domestic violence has been a boon for feminists, who argue that IPV (intimate partner violence) is almost entirely one-sided, with women the vast majority of victims. But I know of many innocent men falsely accused by their partners, who have lost everything, including the right to visit their children, and of others who decide to plea-bargain rather than spend years in court. Plea-bargaining obviously swells the number of ostensibly violent men, a welcome datum for the feminist thesis. I have an acquaintance who, insisting on his integrity, refused the plea offer, resulting in a five-year ongoing trauma that has rendered him penniless and now, with a criminal record, effectively unemployable. His life is ruined.

Additionally, many studies have argued that “gender symmetry” in instances of domestic violence actually exists and that “battered husband syndrome” is a fact of life. Erin Pizzey, founder of the first women’s shelter in the U.K., discovered to her surprise that over 60%of the women admitted to the center were no less violence-prone than their male partners. The issue is clearly vexed.

As David Horowitz writes in RealClear Politics, “In the hysterical atmosphere created by the #MeToo movement – a by-product of the Women’s March and the ‘movement’ that produced it – mere accusations become tantamount to guilt with chilling results, and ominous implications for a country built on due process, and the defense of individual rights.” If, he continues, “elites believe that the core truth of our society is a system of interlocking and oppressive power structures based around immutable characteristics like race or sex or sexual orientation, then sooner rather than later, this will be reflected in our culture at large.” And the culture will suffer for it.

The “Believe All Women” meme is now rooted in our manifold hierarchies of oppression. It will continue to do untold harm to both men and women unless we can return to the approximate sanity of the past, before the absurdly named “Twitter” feeds, the duplicitous and unaccountable intimacy of Facebook, and the Fake News Media came to substitute for investigative justice.

Keith Ellison Is Lying About His Relationship With Farrakhan

by Glenn Kessler at HotAir:

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Ellison repeatedly has danced around the question of his association with Farrakhan, including whether they have crossed paths since he publicly cut ties with the Nation of Islam in 2006. But he needs to provide a better explanation for what he was doing in Farrakhan’s hotel suite in 2016 and what they discussed. He cannot claim to have “disavowed” Farrakhan more than a decade ago while moving the same circles and apparently having a friendly chat behind closed doors.

Carson at least acknowledged he met with Farrakhan to discuss issues related to community concerns. Ellison is trying to have it both ways, publicly distancing himself while privately doing something else. He earns Four Pinocchios for suggesting his interactions with Farrakhan ended in 2006.

Every year, FIRE chooses the 10 worst colleges for free speech — and unfortunately, 2017 left us with plenty of options: Campuses were rocked by violentmobcensorship, monitored by bias response teams, plagued by free speech zones, and beset by far too many disinvitation attempts. Although the number of colleges with the most restrictive speech codes has continued to decline, 90 percent of schools still maintain codes that either clearly restrict or could too easily be used to restrict free speech.

Today, we present our 2018 list of the 10 worst colleges for free speech. As always, our list is presented in no particular order, and it includes both public and private institutions. Public colleges and universities are bound by the First Amendment; the private colleges on this list, though not required by the Constitution to protect student and faculty speech rights, explicitly promise to do so.

A new feature of this year’s list is our Lifetime Censorship Award. This “honor” goes to the one college or university that is so frequently discussed as a contender for our annual “worst colleges for free speech” list that it deserves special recognition. This year, that school is DePaul University.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, N.Y.)

Rensselaer Student Union (Credit: FIRE)

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, nestled in eastern New York, has a long history of censoring anything controversial, from criticism of the Iraq War to critics of that criticism. In 2017, RPI continued that tradition, working (literally) day and night to censor students. The target? Students who criticized what they perceive to be RPI administrators’ attempts to take over the Rensselaer Union — an organization and facility that has been independently operated by RPI students for over a century.

Last fall, students were required to ask administrators’ permission to hold a peaceful demonstration outside a black-tie fundraiser held by RPI’s president, Shirley Ann Jackson. Administrators denied that request — the second time they had denied “Save the Union” advocates permission to hold a demonstration. To add insult to injury, RPI administrators tore down “Save the Union” signs before dawn — an act of censorship caught on video — and erected fences to keep student protesters away from would-be donors.

After students peacefully demonstrated anyway, RPI brought charges against “leaders” of the demonstration — identified as “leaders” on the basis that they spoke to local television stations. One student was charged under a policy barring commercial solicitation for distributing a letter criticizing the administration. These charges were dropped only after months of criticism from FIRE.

RPI’s conduct earned it letters from both FIRE and the New York Civil Liberties Union, which criticized RPI’s use of an “apparently non-existent policy” to penalize critics of the administration. In response to FIRE, RPI claimed student expression would not be punished “provided it is within the realm of civil discourse (e.g., not hate speech or threatening).” RPI has no written policy requiring “civil discourse,” but it does have a “red light” speech code rating from FIRE for other policies restricting student expression.

Drexel University (Philadelphia, Pa.)

Drexel University makes promises to protect professors’ speech rights, but the university’s treatment of Associate Professor George Ciccariello-Maher makes clear it does not keep them.

The trouble for Ciccariello-Maher began on Dec. 24, 2016, when he tweeted “All I Want For Christmas is White Genocide,” which he said was “a satirical tweet about an imaginary concept, ‘white genocide.’” Perhaps predictably, a backlash ensued — one that was fueled in significant part by accounts operated by the Russia-based and Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency. Drexel initially promised Ciccariello-Maher that he would not face punishment for the tweet, but the red light institution quietly launched an investigation anyway.

FIRE wrote to Drexel on June 2, 2017, reminding the university of its commitments to free expression and warning that its investigation of Ciccariello-Maher contradicted those promises. Rather than admit its mistake, Drexel refused to drop its investigation and then barred Ciccariello-Maher from campus in October, citing threats from those outraged by his tweets. When FIRE asked Drexel to provide basic information regarding its decision to ban Ciccariello-Maher, the university refused. Finally, one year after the controversy began, Ciccariello-Maher resigned from his “unsustainable” position, noting, “We are all a single outrage campaign away from having no rights at all, as my case and many others make clear.”

Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.)

To make the list forthefourth time, all Harvard University really had to do was continue unabated on the campaign against free association that landed it on this list last year.

Harvard did just that, and the blacklist policy to deny certain academic and leadership privileges to members of single-gender groups like sororities, fraternities, and final clubs is still on track to be implemented this semester. But, always the overachievers, Harvard’s administration cemented their case with two additional free speech controversies.

First, Harvard rescinded offers of admission from 10 students for sharing joke images in a private group chat on Facebook. Had those students matriculated to Harvard, subjecting them to punishment would have been in violation of Harvard policy. But as the students had only been admitted, Harvard, under the cover of that technicality, deemed them unworthy of protection.

Ironically, this happened only a week after we praised Harvard President Drew Faust for a powerful commencement address in support of free speech on college campuses. She said, in part: “Our values and our theory of education rest on the assumption that members of our community will take the risk of speaking and will actively compete in our wild rumpus of argument and ideas. It requires them as well to be fearless in face of argument or challenge or even verbal insult.”

Harvard’s administration had another opportunity to demonstrate that very same fearlessness when it received criticism from the intelligence community for extending a visiting fellowship to court-martialed former U.S. intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. Instead, it almost immediately buckled to pressure and revoked the fellowship. Harvard’s speed to cave under external criticism further undermines its commitment to the “wild rumpus of ideas.”

With President Faust resigning at the conclusion of this academic year, we hope that her successor, former Tufts University President Lawrence Bacow, will address Harvard’s red light speech code rating and demonstrate the commitment to defending free speech that Faust’s administration lacked. However, given that Bacow’s tenure at Tufts was marred by several speech controversies of its own, we are less than optimistic.

Los Angeles Community College District (Los Angeles, Calif.)

According to the Los Angeles Community College District, all of the grounds on its nine campuses — comprising the largest community college district in the country — are off-limits to free speech, except administratively designated “free speech zones.” The breadth and severity of its speech restrictions, affecting over 150,000 students in the district, earns LACCD a spot on this year’s list.

Last year, a student at one district campus, Los Angeles Pierce College, decided to push back. On March 28, 2017, Pierce student Kevin Shaw filed a lawsuit with FIRE’s help against administrators at LACCD and Pierce College after he was told he could not hand out Spanish-language copies of the U.S. Constitution on behalf of Young Americans for Liberty outside the college’s tiny free speech zone. The zone is about the size of three parking spaces and makes up about .003 percent of the campus. The U.S. Department of Justice filed a statement of interest in Shaw’s case, arguing that he successfully alleged First Amendment violations.

Just last month, the court rejected LACCD administrators’ attempt to dismiss Shaw’s lawsuit, which is part of our Stand Up For Speech Litigation Project. In an opinion from the United States District Court for the Central District of California, the court ruled that open, outdoor areas of Pierce’s campus are public forums for student speech, whether or not school policy attempts to label them otherwise.

Fordham University (New York, N.Y.)

Fordham Rose Hill Campus (Credit: Fordham.edu)

What’s worse than making this list in 2017? Finding yourself back on it in 2018.

In late 2016, Fordham University’s United Student Government Senate and Executive Board granted approval to a prospective chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. However, Dean of Students Keith Eldredge overruled the USG and denied recognition to SJP, writing that he “cannot support an organization whose sole purpose is advocating political goals of a specific group, and against a specific country” and that “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict … often leads to polarization rather than dialogue.”

On Jan. 25, 2017, FIRE and the National Coalition Against Censorship wrote to Fordham (which also earns a red light speech code rating from FIRE), calling on the university to reverse its rejection of SJP in keeping with its free speech promises. Instead, Fordham doubled down and even went so far as to sanction students protesting the university’s decision, which cemented its place on last year’s “10 Worst” list.

But the story didn’t end there. Members of the prospective SJP chapter fought back and fileda lawsuit against Fordham on April 26, 2017. Again, rather than admitting its errors, Fordham continued to stand by its disregard for free association, earning its title as one of 2018’s worst. On Jan. 3, Fordham defended its actions in court by offering a shifting array of justifications for its behavior, each less believable than the last, eventually claiming that the students could start a group, so long as it didn’t use the “Students for Justice in Palestine” name — a claim that directly contradicts the university’s written explanations for why it denied official recognition to the group.

Click below to become better acquainted with the rest of the ten most Soviet fascist institutions preaching hate American males lectures and studies on behalf of today’s feminazis, feminists, black racists, standard communists and atheists of all sexes, colors, shapes, and sizes:

SCHIFF TRASHES LAW ENFORCEMENT

by Scott Johnson at PowerLine:

The Democrats’ media adjunct amplified a key Democratic talking point over the past two weeks. According to the Democrats and their media friends, one is not to criticize the bad actions of anyone in the FBI or other such agencies. If you do, you’re trashing law enforcement. Retroactive application of this rule to the depredations of President Obama and the Obama administration is prohibited. Mollie Hemingway collected a few exhibits of the current media campaign attacking Republicans on this ground in this Federalist column.

Now the shifty Adam Schiff has gone to war on law enforcement in the formerly disapproved fashion. It is not reported this way in Kyle Cheney’s Politico article “Schiff complains FBI, Justice Department making too many demands on Russia memo,” but there it is. Schiff of course also attributes fault to President Trump, at whose behest the FBI and Department of Justice are said to be acting. It’s a twofer! For some reason, Schiff’s shocking disparagement of law enforcement goes unmentioned.

SENATE MAY BE PERILOUSLY CLOSE TO PASSING LIBERAL AMNESTY LEGISLATION

by Paul Mirengoff at PowerLine:

Until today, there were two main immigration reform proposals in the Senate. The first: a proposal by Sen. Grassley, and supported by the White House, to grant amnesty to nearly two million “Dreamers” while (a) allocating $25 billion for a wall and other security measures, (b) cutting way back on chain migration, and (c) ending the diversity lottery. The second: a proposal by Sens. Coons and McCain that would grant the amnesty to even more than two million illegal immigrants and allocate only $3 million towards border security.

Neither bill seemed to have any hope of gaining the 60 votes needed to pass it.

Today, a third proposal emerged. Something called the “Common Sense Caucus” — consisting of some liberal Democrats and some very squishy Republicans — came up with a proposal that grants amnesty for the nearly two million and authorizes $25 billion for southern border security construction projects, but over the course of the next decade, not now.

As for chain migration, the proposal, as I understand it, bars “Dreamers” from sponsoring their parents or enabling hem to receive temporary status. In addition, legal permanent residents would be unable to sponsor their unmarried adult children until they become citizens.

Needless to say, this doesn’t deal with what conservatives mean when they complain about chain migration.

Nor does it deal effectively with border security. If we need a wall — and we’ll need one more than ever after a mass grant of amnesty — construction over a ten year period won’t cut it.

And can we be confident that the $25 billion will actually be spent? I’m not. I assume at some time between now and 2028, open-borders Democrat will gain the political clout necessary to stop construction.

Furthermore, the diversity lottery isn’t addressed at all.

To make matters worse, the proposed legislation audaciously sets priorities for immigration enforcement. It prioritizes people convicted of crimes and those who pose a threat to national security. But when it comes to people only guilty of “unlawful presence,” it calls on immigration officers to focus on those who arrived after June 30, 2018.

Readers will note (though I wonder whether all of the Republican sponsors have) that June 30, 2018 is months away. Thus, this legislation invites aliens to enter the U.S. illegally for the next four months by effectively assuring them they won’t be removed.

In sum, this bill is a travesty.

But what about the politics of the proposal? Can it get 60 votes in the Senate? Can it pass the House? Would President Trump sign it?

Let’s start with the easy question. If the Senate passes this proposal, I’m pretty sure the House will too. Speaker Ryan would love to help enact amnesty legislation, and in the House the votes exist to do it — all House Democrats plus a sufficient number of pro-amnesty Republicans like Ryan.

What about the Senate? All Democrats can be expected to support the proposal (which should tell you all you need to know about its lack of merit). In addition, it has eight Republican sponsors — Sens. Susan Collins, Mike Rounds, Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake, Lisa Murkowski, Cory Gardner, Lamar Alexander, and Johnny Isakson. If John McCain is able to show up for a vote, that would make nine. Only two more GOP votes would be needed.

Would President Trump veto the the bill? It’s clear from the statement the White House issued today that he opposes the approach the Common Sense Caucus proposal takes.

Would this translate into a veto? I think so, but can’t say for sure. I can say that if the Caucus legislation becomes law, it will only be a matter of time before even some of Trump’s ardent supporters conclude they have been sold out on his signature issue. The political consequences could be devastating.

I’m told that Mitch McConnell has filed for cloture on four immigration amendments: the Grassley-White House framework; Coons-McCain; the Common Sense Caucus travesty, and a bill by Sen. Toomey to curb sanctuary cities. Thus, all four measures could be voted on tomorrow or Friday.

Only the travesty has a chance to pass. That chance seems not inconsiderable.